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WilliamPitt (1000+ posts) Tue Aug-02-11 02:28 PM
Original message A President in Reverse

President Barack Obama during a news conference about debt ceiling negotiations, July 29, 2011. (Photo: Philip Scott Andrews / The New York Times)

A President in Reverse
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Tuesday 02 August 2011

Obama's starting point was a demand for a "clean," unencumbered bill to raise the ceiling; House Speaker John Boehner said no. What would have happened if Obama refused to budge? We don't know because that's not his style. It would be nice, someday, to find out.

- Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post, 8/1/2011

The United States of America is different today, different in a fundamental and dramatic way, and is a better place now only for a few thousand people who are rich enough to remain above the effect of this transformation. For the rest of us, the 99% who stay up nights worrying about health care bills, retirement, finding a job, keeping a job, and aging parents who now dangle above a deliberately frayed safety net, it is a colder and more dangerous country we call home.

If I hear one more person try to tell me the deal cut between Congress and the White House was as good as we can expect, that it isn't all bad, I might vomit on them. This whole thing has been a disaster, and no amount of spin can alter the fact. Mr. Obama has taken to the habit of abject retreat with such gusto that he should be outfitted with one of those beeping devices they put on trucks to alert people when they go in reverse. At least that way, we will have some warning the next time this Democratic president backs away from the very policies and priorities he was elected to protect and defend.

We sure could have used such a signal during this debt-fight calamity.

I want a clean debt bill. Beep-beep-beep, never mind.

I want, no, I demand revenue enhancements - not from new taxes, but from closing loopholes - and I will reject any bill that does not include them. Beep-beep-beep, forget I said that.

We must protect Social Security and Medicare. Beep-beep-beep, but now I look good to Independent voters, or something, right?

It has become an all too familiar sound, really.

I will close Guantanamo. Beep-beep-beep.

There needs to be a public option in the health care reform bill. Beep-beep-beep.

The Bush-era tax cuts? Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.

An interesting thing happens when someone backs up. They get smaller in your vision, receding slowly but surely until they are all but invisible. So it is with this president, who goes into the 2012 election season a small fraction of the man who would supposedly make history.

Even the smallest business asks what someone has done before their workcarreer before hiring for a job, but , no, not DU.

Instead they ask the following.

What religions do hate, what would race would you want to be, shoe size , social class, what books would you burn would if given the chance, do want to re-write Bill Of Rights, .... now here's the big one ... do you hate people differrent views , or do just loath enough to strip them of civil liberties?

Worse then ask the right and the wise, what we have in its place is someone feeding their shallow delusions and re-enforcing their insanity.

Your basic Moonbat who looks for someone can just be a mirror for their narrow world view.

Remember how DU wanted to lynch Joe The Plumber for asking real questions during the campaign.